A
double-exposed self-portrait of Rico Lebrun given to fellow artist
Morton Traylor in 1950.

Frederico (Rico) Lebrun was born on December 10th,
1900 in Naples, Italy. His formal art education consisted of attending
technical school and art classes at night, studying the Old Masters
in museums, and assisting fresco painters. He was profoundly influenced
by both Italian and Spanish art, Naples having been ruled by Spain
almost continuously from the mid-16th to the late 18th century. His
admiration for fresco tradition, his preference for ambitious subjects
addressed on a grand scale, and the baroque sweep of his style all
reflect the heritage of Italian art; his high seriousness of purpose,
as well as a certain preoccupation with tragedy and death, can be
attributed to the influence of Spain. Alongside the always-powerful
influence of Michelangelo, he maintained a lifelong affinity for
Goya and Picasso.

Lebrun immigrated
to the United States in 1924 to design stained glass in Springfield,
Illinois. The next year the artist settled
in New York, where he built a successful commercial art practice
as a fashion illustrator and advertising artist. By 1930, Lebrun
was prosperous, but dissatisfied. He abandoned his business and
entered the field of fine arts. After a move to Southern California
in 1938,
Lebrun taught at the Chouinard Art Institute and then at the
Disney Studios, working with animators on the figure of Bambi
for the
forthcoming feature film. In 1935 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship
for his
first mural project; in 1942, he exhibited in "Americans 1942" at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work appeared in group
exhibitions at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art and the
Metropolitan Museum.

Rico Lebrun and Morton
Traylor working on the Crucifixion triptych in 1951.

In 1947, Lebrun
became master instructor at the new Jepson Art Institute in Los
Angeles. He was a charismatic
and popular teacher, frequently lecturing to standing room only
crowds. From 1947 to 1950, his style becoming increasingly abstract
and gestural,
Lebrun also worked on his ambitious Crucifixion cycle, now in
the Syracuse University collection. By the end of the decade
Lebrun
had garnered a considerable reputation on the West Coast, both
as an
artist and as a teacher.

In 1952,
the artist left Southern California for Mexico, where he taught
at the Institute of San Miguel de Allende. After briefly
experimenting
with formal abstraction there, Lebrun returned to Los Angeles in
1954 and resumed his prior interest in the human figure, beginning
a series of drawings and paintings to memorialize the victims of
the Holocaust. In 1958, Lebrun taught at Yale and the next year
served as an artist in residence in Rome. When he returned to Southern
California
in 1960, he began working on the Genesis mural at Pomona College.
Lebrun then worked on a smaller scale after the mural's dedication
in 1961, making drawings and prints for Dante's Inferno. Becoming
ill with cancer in 1963, Rico Lebrun died on May 9th the following
year at his home in Malibu.